Finding My Confidence, Part 2

When we last left off, I was wondering whether I could motivate myself to run in the mid-afternoon heat, on a Monday.  After a few training cycles, I’ve finally found a schedule that works.  I run 5 days a week: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, with speed work on Tuesdays, and long runs on Sundays.  With this summer’s heat, morning running is the only way for me to get it done.

I checked into the hotel, and flopped onto the bed, eating a mint and staring at the ceiling.  It was hot, but I wanted to run.  I needed to burn off some of the anxious energy.  I changed clothes, hopped in the car, and drove over to the University of Illinois campus.  Unfamiliar with campus aside from the above park, I just started running.  I took off at a decent pace, but the temperature and lack of water during the day caught up to me, and I only logged three miles.  But three miles is better than none.

On Wednesdays, my husband and I run with Back on My Feet Indianapolis Team Manchester.  Wednesday runs are usually only 30-35 minutes, so we get in between three and four miles.  Most weeks we tack on another two miles before heading home, but my husband has been dealing with an IT band issue, so this week we called it quits after the 3.75 team run.

By this point in the week, I was a little behind on miles, but getting back on track.  Up next was a speed workout I had been dreading – 6×800.  I had successfully completed two 4×800 sessions, but adding two more when I had been so lax about training freaked me out.  I woke up Thursday to rain, thunder, and lightning.  I was happy for the much-needed shower, but lightning meant no go on the run.  The rained cooled things off significantly, but by the time I got home from work, the sun was out and it was a steamy mess.  I postponed the run again, telling myself it just made more sense to do it Friday morning.

Friday morning came around and I just couldn’t drag myself out of bed.  I started thinking I would just skip it altogether.  There was no way I was going to do six 800s at a 4:00 pace anyway.  Having worked two 10+ hour days earlier in the week, I was planning to leave work early, and I decided I would just run in the afternoon. To my surprise, it was quite pleasant out.  I got home, sat on the couch debating with myself for a while, and then decided I just needed to go DO IT.  No more excuses.  I’d already changed my Garmin interval workout.

I do my 800 workouts on and around Butler’s campus.  A few hills, lots of straightaways, few people to worry about weaving past.  As I finished my second 800, it became clear that while it was much cooler out, it was still really warm in the sun and I had not worn the proper shirt.  I finished the third, and with three more to go, I decided it was OK to walk a bit during the rest intervals.  I finished them all, still managed to jog/walk the mile home, and somehow hit 4:00 or less on 4 of the 6.  Wait, what was that I was feeling? Oh, yeah – confidence.  She was coming back.

I started mentally preparing for Sunday’s long run after that speed workout.  I had a slow recovery run on Saturday, but woke up ready to go Sunday morning.  My legs were still heavy, so I started slowly.  The weather was perfect.  By the time I hit the turnaround point, I felt great.  I had been picking up the pace with each mile, and as I turned to go home I made a conscious effort to continue speeding up.  I’ll be honest, the last couple of miles were hard, but I finished strong with the last mile at an 8:24 pace.

Despite some hiccups, I did what I said I needed to do – I got in all of my runs.  As I proudly looked at my Daily Mile graph for the week, I started to once again believe that I will tackle 26.2 come November.  This week’s long run is 14 miles, which will be the longest distance I have run to date.  I know that clearing the hurdle of running farther than a half marathon will be a huge confidence boost, and I’m looking forward to it.  I’m also not ready to give up on my 4 hour goal, and I started out this week with renewed purpose.  No more slacking off.  No more excuses.  Just focus, running, and having fun.

Finding My Confidence, Part 1

Marathon training started out like gangbusters.  For four weeks, I got in all my miles, all my speed workouts (even those dreaded Yasso 800s), and all my long runs (including a great 10 miler).  Then things fell apart.  I’m not sure what happened.  I missed a long run (beer was involved).  I missed a mid-distance run (beer was again involved).  I went on vacation.  I was busy at work getting ready for a trial.  Before I knew it, two weeks had gone by, I’d hardly run any miles, and I all but forgot what a long run entailed.

I was mad at myself, but I was also starting to get worried.  I’m trying to run a marathon.  This isn’t something I can just half-ass for the next few weeks and then wake up on November 3 expecting to run 26.2 miles.  I don’t want to be miserable, and I don’t want to be out there for five hours.  Despite my fears, I still couldn’t find the motivation to get back on schedule.

I had expected lots of running while I was in San Francisco.  In spite of (or maybe because of) the hills, it’s one of my favorite places to run.  There’s nothing like running along the Bay, through the Presidio, and over to the Golden Gate Bridge.  I’d been looking forward to doing that again since the last time I did it in April of 2011.  It was going to be thirty+ degrees cooler than home, and I was anxious for a fast pace.  We were there for a week.  We ran twice.  I don’t know what happened.  Our first run was great – it was cool; we were fast.  Then it was like some weird depression fog came over me.

We got home on a Wednesday (after 24 hours of being in airports and flying), and upon arrival were greeted by near-triple digit temps and humidity.  That fog followed me home, settled in, and I swear it started talking to me.  “You missed your long run.  It’s already Wednesday afternoon.  You aren’t going to run today.  You’ll never get  your miles in.  You can’t run five days in a row after missing so much time.  Just sit on the couch until next week.”  Not only did I listen, but I bought into it, too.

The weekend rolled around, and still exhausted from “sleeping” on an airplane, I chose sleep over running.  Knowing that I needed to be up by 6:30 in order to accomplish any decent mileage, I repeatedly hit the snooze button until I turned off the alarm.  When I peeked at the clock again, it was 8:45.  Game over.

I wanted to believe that I could just start fresh on Monday.  Just put the past few weeks behind me and start over.  I had a tough speed workout on the calendar and a 12 mile run to try to make up for the missed distance.  If I could get through it all, I would consider myself to be back on track.  The catch was that I was going to be out of town Monday and Tuesday for the trial.  Travel, stress, anxiety, and final preparations were going to make morning runs impossible.  Illinois was just has hot as Indiana.  Did I have it in myself to go out and run in the heat of the late afternoon?

I wasn’t sure, even though I knew if I didn’t get my sh*t together, it would be time to start thinking about changing my entry to the half.

Curious to find out what happens?  Come back tomorrow for Part 2!